wayward son

" yeah, & what would you know about being human? " he bares his teeth in a threatening rictus no one would mistake for a smile. fingertips fiddling above the knife hilt sheathed from his belt, tabulating how long it would take him to hoist & halo it in a fatal blow should he need to. " unless you're talking some ethical consumption crap about snagging the nearest heifer, neither one of us is gonna be laughing. "

minor confusion etched it's way into stern features; pulling their maw downwards upon further inspection of the sudden shift. often did he lose sight of the way phrases tended to roll off of the tongue; dependent entirely on how they were delivered. no longer just about prayer, the way the hunter fidgeted so, bit back with honesty only to dilute himself into silence. apparent then; initial call laden with confession, though not of faith.

" you ... don't need any assistance? " open-ended, both a question and a statement somehow, an awkward head tilt of the angel's own to mimic what he'd just seen. confusion warred with a want to unearth. " i suspected it sounded ... different. " roughness caught the end of his words, features turned themselves away for only a moment with drooping eyelids. " something's bothering you. " stated clearer then, more than anything else uttered prior. " why exactly did you call? "

the stillness lingers, waxing past the natural beat. " knew you'd hear it. " it isn't a transactional inquest the way their early contacts might have been, but it's an earnest exchange all the same. an unconscious bid for connection born through the simple yet solemn act of bowing his head & uplifting his wants. it's a rare occasion that he tends to them.

dean's staid, marbleized expression in its perennial ponderous brow crouched down, the intensity harrowed into his gaze, & the thin, tensile line of his lips pressed together, slackens. it's not much, just a hair, like a finger easing off a coiled trigger, but it's enough to let castiel know that just for a moment, he needs to let the weight down.

          ❛             i always thought they were meant to be death omens , rather than actual physical entities. most stories involve them appearing to someone who's going to die soon after.            ❜          she could feel his breath tickling the soft hairs of her neck , throat bobbing with a harsh swallow as she swept her hand across her damp tresses to tuck them behind her ears. elena was painfully aware of how close they were , how if she tilted her head just right , it would be so easy to trace her mouth along his jaw. there was so much unspoken between them , so much history building up toward something that her almost ritualistic sacrifice ground to a halt. now she was fragile to him again , now she was in danger.

" got it in one. " dean rocks up, tilted half by his impressed surprise & half by the divot her elbow makes in the thin padding. she wedges under the pinnacle of his shoulder. the utilitarian motel laundry detergent from his clothes now mingles with rote shower gel & shampoo & something uniquely elena that riles a nostalgic ache along with a raucous chorale of butterflies shimmying up from beneath his ribcage ( that he promptly ignores ). returning as close he can to his studious angle, their arms now brushing, mattress shifting with each breath & maneuver, he points to the small print in front of him. " points for public education. who would've thought. "

" except these creepy sons of bitches don't exactly follow the fairy tale legends. "

dean unearths a book from the bottom stack of his files & folders. the binding flakes free from the spine, papers weathered coffee-splatter dark from age. he turns to a page there, then hangs off the bed to fish with a sweeping hand for the butter-soft cover of his father's journal. cross-referencing the busy, scrawled notes in his father's hand with the fading type, he shows elena what it is they're looking for.

& somehow manages to stay on the business side of appropriate for how close they are, for how he can feel the spin of her breath casting over his collar, the ginger dusting of damp ends over the brawl-beaten shells of his knuckles ...

a rumbling clear of his throat barely chokes free before the skating path of her lips meanders past the cotton strained over his shoulder & up to a bristled pulse of his adam's apple.

sam shuffles foot to foot, hip cocked at a lax angle. the tension he bears settles into the plaid bound line of his shoulders, stiff plateaus markedly heavy. in that moment, he is simply sam, an anxious swirl flexing the muscle cradling his viscera, crown cast down. his bangs shadow the nervous dart of his stare, a dog's white whale eyes.

" only one person's here's doing anything to you. " the crisis point of his indignation, despite its moral shape, is anything but righteous in its fuming. ( maybe it's the shadowy silhouette leaping off the rack with brand & knife in hand, ready to tear souls asunder projecting on the opposite wall in lieu of a daeva by his brothers' conjuring ) but it's hot & it's scorching a hole straight through the remnant hope that by his passage to hell in exchange for sam's life that it might have somehow saved him. dean's lip curdles in a snarl of blatant disgust. he stands taller under the thrust of the protesting push of sam's finger into the adjunct tendons to his throat, defiant against the dearth of height he has in comparison. " & we both know there ain't anything good about this. "

" look, sam. " when dean speaks again, it's with the militaristic plane of his posture slackened, elbows dropping from ramrod to gentle crooks corseting his torso. tension still circulates the blueprint of his musculature, pulse a hearty hammer just north of where sam's index finger juts. " whatever it is you're doing here, it's not too late. "

A pause, a breath sucked in through his mouth. Isaiah gives an attempt at a smile that looks a little more like a wince. These conversations never were all that easy. It weren't as if he could just go out telling folks what exactly happened. There was a reason the town he was last seen in wasn't specified.

"ran away from home, he did. and, i understand that maybe i'm inserting myself where i'm not wanted in whatever life he's made for himself now but uh." A shrug. "he's my brother. that's really all i can say. he's my brother and i want to know he's safe, even if he'll hate me for finding him."

dean studies the missing person poster within the frame of this newfound information. maybe it could make a difference if he could see the running in the guy's eyes, something shifty & furtive, or instead rabbity & hunted. he can't find either. printer's ink might not be precise enough to render that level of emotion down in grainy toner.

in either case, he recognizes the bereft left-behind brother half a country away like he's looking in the mirror. when sam left for stanford, he felt like he'd sawed off an arm, walking around with a slant to his posture, the chip on him like an open wound.

" you think he just up & left? " dean asks, thumb pinching a crinkle into the paper. an unconscious square of his stance rolls him up to stand straight before he shifts his gaze back at the man in front of him. he can see a faint resemblance, again, whatever pixels can paint. a scrutinizing squint feathers the premature creases out from the corners of his stare. " running from someone? "

by the time she steps out for one, it's all pitch-black dark and stars winkin' in her peripheral. the low rumbling of engines hissin' out in the distance like snakes. lucy bows her head, lights the vice, and inhales slow— pokin' her head up only to see a familiar face come out. dean, from everything she knows, is rough and tough and jagged around the edges like every other hunter she's met. and dean, from everything she sees, is tired and worn thin like someone who's got more depth than they let on. so, as one does, she dives in headfirst.

"you're up late." lucy comments, idle, and shoves the lighter in her palm down deep into her pocket. she pulls her stare away from him, watching a beetle on the ground climb between the street and the curb. if she was a lil' braver, and a lot less hesitant, she might ask him if he's okay. but because she ain't, and she's only as strong as the hunters around her, she keeps her mouth shut.

share. the sender passes their flask to the receiver. — @picksmusic, as dean winchester.

he'd had enough of the rough hew of motel sheets strangling him up in their toss-turn tangle. so, here he is with his hips capped up against the brim of the impala, looking up at the velvet sprawl of a sky dappled here & there with violet grey swirls or clusters of twinkling lights. he'd tinkered under the car hood for a while, palms showing grease like newsprint vining the ley lines crosshatching a longer life than he'd ever deserve. now, he's busying his senses with a stringent, smoking sear one sip at a time.

& he's got company.

" couldn't sleep. " in the yellow flood from the fizzing overhead lamp, his silhouette rises a shoulder on the same arm offering @preveils the rotgut olive branch.

they'd gotten into it, heat still hazy around his temples & throat rough from the shouting. both in the midst of it & in the comedown, his bruised pride is still winning, boxing out any honest humility to mend the fences between them at every turn. worse, he hadn't seen it coming, & now his mulishness begs him to sink both his boot heels into the marshy ground even though he's already started shoving ahead as though nothing has happened at all.

the humidity chews at him like the cricket din sawing their legs in symphony with the chorale of revving motors in the distance. prickling sweat lacquers his neck behind his jacket's leather wedge & he uses his hand, now absent the flask, to worry away at it. maybe it's the muggy heat making him wilt toward recompense, tilted over with the steady, cherry blaze of her cigarette torching another shade in the night.

sam grinds his jaw, a protracted sigh swelling his rib bones. if only john had loved them more than he'd hungered for vengeance: consolidated transcripts would've been a nice little boon.

the door thunks into the adjacent wall when it opens, so forcefully that sam jumps right out of his skin. hot, prickly panic sweeps through the atrium of his chest, thickening in the sinew of his throat. a freeze response ensues, an impossible weight numbing his fingers.

dean's hoodie, seized years beforehand, barely fits sam now. it skates up around his hips every time he moves.

' hey. uh.. where's dad? '

salt grit spackles dark across his brow, sweat acrid & stale clinging in his underarms & peppered in the wilting blond fronds tilting down over his forehead. the gap-toothed luminescence of the motel's sign had been the first welcome respite dean had seen in a hundred miles. sam, clean, & bent guiltily over the paltry excuse of a desk huddled under sulky light rustles a booming guffaw from a buried place behind the gristle of dean's sternum. after a long hunt, he needs a good laugh & seeing his brother like this is such a quintessential scene ripped out of a sitcom that it hoists his spirits immediately.

" jeez, sammy. " his jacket sloughs off, sleeve by sleeve. dean tumbles into the mattress nearest the door. his body thumps into the overworked box springs, sending them into a chorus of creaking. both boots are still on, the laces of the left one licking mildewy quilting. muck grouts between the lugs. in spite of it all, fatigue wicks all the way through every string of sinew in his body. he's tired & it's good to be somewhere with family.

dean hikes the flat pillow rolled under his neck & hurls it across the room to smack pitifully into the curling chestnut waves flaring sam's nape above a borrowed hoodie's cowl. " if you wanted to look at some girlie mags, you should've put a sock on the door. "